Fog and Portrayals of Mike

Starling just brought me a mouse that she'd shooed one of the cats away from. "Can I keep it in the cage with Mette's hamster?" she plead. "It isn't dead! It's still kind of alive!" And then, with panic rising in her voice as she sensed my revulsion and rushed to curb my coming refusal, "Please! Can I just keep it in a jar for a while?"

That "kind of alive" description took quite a stretch of the imagination (and brought to mind the old "I'm not quite dead yet" from Monty Python and the Holy Grail as well as "It just so happens he's only mostly dead" from The Princess Bride). And I had to insist that the only possible way it might ever continue kind of alive would be if she took it to a nice patch of dirt and weeds immediately. Very immediately. 

Shudder.

I am still not quite as accustomed to this farm life as I sometimes think I am.

But! I am accustomed to this:

Fog!

And another morning even foggier than the last:

Walking down the driveway to the bus. (I love that the bus now picks my kids up just right at the end of our very own driveway.)

(Starling's clothing looking very Starlingish as usual.)

Walking back up the drive to the house. (I had to press onward towards it on faith alone.)

Halfway up the drive and you can still barely make out its ghostly outline.

We don't get as much fog as we did in Young Ward, but, waking to it so thick here this week, my soul felt like a child discovering that Christmas morning still came--even after a move to a new house and a worry that Santa wouldn't know where to find me. 

(A friend told me her daughter lived up here and couldn't bear it. The fog made her feel claustrophobic. Interestingly enough, I actually do suffer quite badly from claustrophobia, but not with fog for heaven's sake! It so mysterious and lovely that it makes me feel ... well ... I hardly know! Only, driving between here and Mendon on a foggy morning you alternate passing between thick, hazy patches of fog and clear, distinct strips and streaks; it lifts itself off of the ponds and riverways like thick steam; it hovers and drifts--it moves--low over the grasses; and the ethereal beauty of it has, in actual fact, reduced me to tears on more than one occasion.)

But. What else?

Ah.

Mike recently told me that it's always a bit awkward for him when he meets someone who knows him solely from my blog. He's not quite sure just who they expect him to be, but he suspects it is some sort of ... oh, I don't know ... very nice ... farmer-ish fellow.

Well. 

That is unfair of me--to have inadvertently burdened him with such expectations through my portrayals. (Particularly when he would greatly prefer to never be portrayed at all and is only subject to it by the fact that I have never yet figured how to write about life ... without him.) 

But in truth he has done very little farming these many years (and only recently developed the habit of acquiring livestock). (Though even he can't deny he has had a penchant for doing things like renting piglets and goats for the kids' Spring Breaks and coming home with baby chicks--which doings lend themselves to farmer-ish interpretation.)

And as for the nice business? I've only painted him as I've seen him. And I don't know that he can truly refute that. (And I hope that I have also painted him as strong, ridiculously capable, and full of integrity.) But, for his sake, I will try to paint him no further. (Nonsense. I won't try that for a minute.)

I will, however, momentarily divert attention from him by pulling things back to the house and farm. 

Look at this picture Jesse took the other evening. Even without the fog it is still tolerable!

Glimpses of the Happenings Around Here

The twice-yearly dental check-up/Pizzeria outing. (Have I mentioned that the dentist Mike takes them all to is the boy [man now I suppose] I was on a date with when Mike met me [and his dad told him all was fair in love and war]? Well, that's who they all go to all right. I guess that makes he and Mike even? Mike stole his date away and married her ... but, as an apology, offered him a plethora or dental patients later. Seems fair enough.)

The month of October has seemed very little like a month of school for these kids. (At least to me.) Not only fall break, but the elementary, middle school, and high school have all had different days off for ... unknown reasons throughout the month. I don't think there's been a single full week of school. In any case, Mette's two best friends (who she rarely gets to see now--since they were in a different middle school boundary) took her kayaking and to Chik-Fil-A on one of the aforementioned days of no school.

Sometimes, if you are lucky, the moon reflects perfectly from one window in this house to the window on the other side of the house so that you end up feeling like you are living in a Ray Bradbury novel on some planet with multiple moons.

East facing and west facing windows in these two picture.

You may recall my flower bed disasters this year? Where hundreds of dollars of flowers all withered away to dust? Well! This dear little hollyhock and dahlia somehow, out of the dust, sprung up recently. After enduring whatever it is they have, I hardly dare tell them that a frost will kill them shortly. Valiant effort though. Valiant.

Anders got his learner's permit! There are just so many things you do on repeat when you have a million kids. And driving with each of them for 40 hours is one of those things. This is our sixth go. (That is also him wearing a bear head in the picture below this one. Probably won't let him wear that driving. Yet.)

Goldie and Wyatt took Isaac to a pumpkin patch. I'm guessing he wasn't overly aware of what a fun adventure he was having, but it sure is fun to have a baby to start holiday traditions with. I still remember Mike and I waking up two-week old Abe to come out by the tree with us to open his presents. :)

Speaking of baby Isaac, you may be surprised to learn we have not yet tired of him.

Kids doing kid things.

The loveliest room. It almost makes me weep. (The girls are lovely as well of course.)

I've been threatening to end piano and violin lessons due to the fact that nobody ever practices. (And due to the fact that I am just not good at enforcing it.) But they seem to have, at least temporarily, been somewhat motivated by my threats.)

Jesse has been a dancing fool this year. (Rather, he asked someone to Homecoming and went. [I took their pictures and did a lovely job I must say.] And now he has been asked to Sadie's.)

Hans found the high-key button on my phone camera the other day.

Summer making sugar cookies. She did an excellent job!

Abe and Kenya before the big BYU/Notre Dame game. (They are there now, so I cannot yet report if there was a win. But a big deal apparently. Abe texted that it was the first time two top 10 teams have played at BYU's stadium.)

Boys on the front porch. 

The End.

Sentiments of Autumn Perhaps

I still find myself feeling surprised that Logan is home--and that I plan on it being so until the day that I die. Logan. Cache Valley. The farm. It feels something like saying the names of my new babies over and over until the names finally began to sound real and a part of our family rather than like playing pretend. Ogden has been so much home and so much a part of my identity (and, for generations, my family's identity). I wonder a little how I can be planted firmly in Cache Valley with such Ogden blood running in my veins. (And it isn't just blood, you know. Or, at least, not just DNA. I think my blood could be just as well described as: Polk's End. And walking up to Taylor elementary and home from church through where our backyard touched Robins Ave. It's full of sledding the "no-dump" hill, driving the backroads to Ogden High, Christmas Eve at my grandma's up 27th street and balancing on the metal railing around her patio and past her back porch rose garden. It's countless runs behind Mt. Ogden golf course, and countless hikes to Malan's Peak and along Indian Trail. It's Weber State's campus and my dad's office window in the social sciences building, Christmas Village on 25th street, the Memmott's big tree house, Rainbow Gardens, and Farr's Ice Cream.)

For all of that, I love it here. There seems to have been room in my heart yet for a grafting in with this valley. Perhaps my ancestors felt the same as they settled in--and maybe even came to love--these areas while simultaneously wondering if their children and grandchildren would somehow still carry whispers of and tuggings towards Norway, and England, and Scottland, and Denmark, and Ireland, and Switzerland. 

That's silly I suppose. To compare a change across oceans with my tiny re-planting an hour's drive north. Even so, I feel a deeper kinship and understanding with them.

And also, it could just be that it's fall. It seems to have made me more contemplative and sentimental this year. My heart feels drawn out in thoughts of seasons (of life as well as nature). I don't know why exactly. Maybe it has something to do with how much better acquainted I've become with the seasons here. Particularly fall. And not just the ash's orange-tipped yellow leaves. Yes those (thank goodness).

But also the sun setting further and further south until it sinks into the highest tips of the Wellsvilles outside my kitchen-sink window. And milkweed opening like southern cotton all along the ditch banks. (Why does that one make me unaccountably happy? I don't know. But it's nice that there are strange little things like that in life that do.)

The season's final hay crops bundled in fields. The Zilles' farmland down the road from the church turning orange with pumpkins. The fall gathering of red-winged blackbirds. Everything on the farm shifting from green to yellow, and the weeds along the roadways changing not only to yellow but to browns and reds as well.

There's something in all the noticing that makes one think and feel more. (Or at least ramble more!)

And with that, I think I will go make a regular old "glimpses of the happenings around here" type of post.

Saturdays at the Farm

Sometimes I try to imagine what Saturdays without the farm might be like. No troughs to be built, horses or cows to be moved, fences fixed, septic tanks recovered, or trees planted. (That wasn't a random list. Those were the tasks of just the last few weeks.)

I idly wonder if winter will mean a temporary pause in the never-ending call of farm projects (and then semi conclude that it will not). 

But it's hard to imagine what life might be ... if it wasn't what it is. And I've grown accustomed to viewing tending to the farm not much differently from nurturing and raising our family (as I wonder which efforts will prove the most beneficial, which will be slow in producing results, which will fail, and which will bring us the most satisfaction).

Last weekend we planted the three maples Mike bought me. And it's interesting how a simple sentence like that carries a swell of images and feelings with it. (The two backyard maples at our Pleasant View house, how much they grew in our time there, their red leaves against the blue sky, iron chlorosis affecting the one, discussions with Mike over the low likelihood of them doing well here, and mostly a feeling of gratitude knowing Mike bought them anyway because he loves me and knows I love maples in the fall.) 

Several of these trees were planted in pastures and so needed surrounded by panels to keep cows and horses from eating them. Here strong Hansie pulled some under the barbwire for me.

We've planted so many trees since moving here. I would love to have the far north side of our property (which is partial wetlands) fill in with willows. We've planted dozens the past few years, but I think only a very few have taken (and they are tiny yet). We've made a line of lindens running up from the road nearly to the house (those are the ones we carried buckets of water to all summer long). We've planted the Christmas tree from our last Christmas in the rental in a far corner of the front yard, the black willow from the ranch out back, and now, my three maples spaced here and there about he house. And I'd still like to create a barrier of trees between us and the sounds of the highway on the southeast side of our property. 

As we plant them, I wonder which ones will take at all, and which ones I will live to see full-sized--changing the landscape and views here at the farm, and if I'll be here at 80--looking at 50-foot-tall trees and telling my grandkids about the weekends when we planted them and wondered if they'd ever get big at all. Will we look back at pictures from our earliest years living here and exclaim over how different things looked? Or will we have them all fail us? I don't know. We just keep planting and waiting and wondering. Trees do not grow like weeds; I will tell you that!

Some projects are a bit more painful than others. This morning Mitch (son of a neighbor who did work on the driveway and septic field [and likely other random things] for us) is out there digging out the pond.

It's a project we've needed and wanted done for some time. The pond used to be in constant use during family farm days--canoes and little kayaks and what not, but it's slowly filled in so much that the last time we tried paddling in it, it was less floating than dragging the boat along by pushing the paddle against mud. So, we've been excited about getting it back in proper use. 

But ...

The cattails and purple weeds (invasive, Mike tells me, and not supposed to be encouraged, but which I secretly--or, I guess openly--adore) are being trampled and clawed away in the process. And the entire farm is being layered in piles of muck and mud. I don't know exactly how or when that will all be taken care of. (And it is a mess! You can hardly walk to the barn from the house now.) I fret that my pretty pond backdrop will fill in with unsightly prickly weeds where the cattails once were. But, "it has to be done", Mike reminded me as I watched it happening through a knit brow a few moments ago. 

And he's right. Messy work and messy processes for ... eventual better things. 

Is it any wonder I've become so reflective over everything happening at the farm? Any surprise that I see metaphor in half of what we do here? Or that there's both nostalgia and yearning sprinkled over my feelings related to all of these tasks? 

No, I suppose not.

In any case, while I've sat at my kitchen table thinking philosophically about all the work and labor we have been pouring into this farm, Mike has been out ... actually seeing to it. So perhaps I will at least go check on the man and the goings on. The digging sounds from that track hoe haven't stopped once since I began this, so fingers crossed the sight I'm about to be greeted with won't be too harrowing!